she was displeased with him. In this instance her anger was not strong enough to resist the anticipation of a secret, probably relating to that little drama which had, during the last weeks, been in progress under her very eyes. With a resolute movement, she brushed her tears away, bent eagerly forward, and, in the next moment, her face was all expectancy and animation.
Arnfinn pulled a thick black note-book from his breast pocket, opened it in his lap, and read:
“August 3, 5 A. M.–My little invalid is doing finely; he seemed to relish much a few dozen flies which I brought him in my hand. His pulse is to-day, for the first time, normal. He is beginning to step on the injured leg without apparent pain.
“10 A. M.–Miss Augusta’s eyes have a strange, lustrous brilliancy whenever she speaks of subjects which seem to agitate the depths of her
being. How and why is it that an excessive amount of feeling always finds its first expression in the eye? One kind of emotion seems to widen the pupil, another kind to contract it. TO be noticed in future, how particular emotions affect the eye.
“6 P. M.–I met a plover on the beach this afternoon. By imitating his cry, I induced him to come within a few feet of me. The plover, as his cry indicates, is a very melancholy bird. In fact I believe the melancholy temperament to be prevailing among the wading birds, as the phlegmatic among birds of prey. The singing birds are choleric or sanguine. Tease a thrush, or even a lark, and you will soon be convinced. A snipe, or plover, as far as my experience goes, seldom shows anger; you cannot tease them. To be considered, how far the voice of a bird may be indicative of its temperament.
“August 5, 9 P. M.–Since the unfortunate meeting yesterday morning, when my intense pre-occupation with my linnet, which had torn its wound open again, probably made me commit some breach of etiquette, Miss Augusta
avoids me.
“August 7–I am in a most singular state. My pulse beats 85, which is a most unheard-of thing for me, as my pulse is naturally full and slow. And, strangely enough, I do not feel at all unwell. On the contrary, my physical well- being is rather heightened than otherwise. The life of a whole week is crowded into a day, and that of a day into an hour.”
Inga, who, at several points of this narrative, had been struggling hard to preserve her gravity, here burst into a ringing laugh.
“That is what I call scientific love-making,” said Arnfinn, looking up from the book with an expression of subdued amusement.
“But Arnfinn,” cried the girl, while the laughter quickly died out of her face, “does Mr.
Strand know that you are reading this?”
“To be sure he does. And that is just what to my mind makes the situation so excessively comical. He has himself no suspicion that this book contains anything but scientific notes. He appears to prefer the empiric method in love as in philosophy. I verily believe that he is innocently experimenting with himself, with a view to making some great physiological discovery.”
“And so he will, perhaps,” rejoined the girl, the mixture of gayety and grave solicitude making her face, as her cousin thought, particularly charming.
“Only not a physiological, but possibly a psychological one,” remarked Arnfinn. “But listen to this. Here is something rich:
“August 9–Miss Augusta once said something about the possibility of animals being immortal. Her eyes shone with a beautiful animation as she spoke. I am longing to continue
the subject with her. It haunts me the whole day long. There may be more in the idea than appears to a superficial observer.”
“Oh, how charmingly he understands how to deceive himself,” cried Inga.
“Merely a quid pro quo,” said Arnfinn.
“I know what I shall do!”
“And so do I.”
“Won’t you tell me, please?”
“No.”
“Then I sha’n’t tell you either.”
And they flew apart like two thoughtless little birds (“sanguine,” as Strand would have called them), each to ponder on some formidable plot for the reconciliation of the estranged lovers.
V.
During the week that ensued, the multifarious sub-currents of Strand’s passion seemed
slowly to gather themselves into one clearly defined stream, and, after much scientific speculation, he came to the conclusion that he loved
Augusta. In a moment of extreme discouragement, he made a clean breast of it to Arnfinn, at the same time informing him that he had packed his knapsack, and would start on his wanderings again the next morning. All his friend’s entreaties were in vain; he would and must go. Strand was an exasperatingly head- strong fellow, and persuasions never prevailed with him. He had confirmed himself in the belief that he was very unattractive to women, and that Augusta, of all women, for some reason which was not quite clear to him, hated and abhorred him. Inexperienced as he was, he could see no reason why she should avoid him, if she did not hate him. They sat talking until mid- night, each entangling himself in those passionate paradoxes and contradictions peculiar to passionate and impulsive youth. Strand paced the floor with large steps, pouring out his long pent-up emotion in violent tirades of self- accusation and regret; while Arnfinn sat on the bed, trying to soothe his excitement by assuring him that he was not such a monster as, for the moment, he had believed himself to be, but only
succeeding, in spite of all his efforts, in pouring oil on the flames. Strand was scientifically convinced that Nature, in accordance with some inscrutable law of equilibrium, had found it necessary to make him physically unattractive, perhaps to indemnify mankind for that excess of intellectual gifts which, at the expense of the race at large, she had bestowed upon him.
Early the next morning, as a kind of etherealized sunshine broke through the white muslin
curtains of Arnfinn’s room, and long streaks of sun-illumined dust stole through the air toward the sleeper’s pillow, there was a sharp rap at the door, and Strand entered. His knapsack was strapped over his shoulders, his long staff was in his hand, and there was an expression of conscious martyrdom in his features. Arnfinn raised himself on his elbows, and rubbed his eyes with a desperate determination to get awake, but only succeeded in gaining a very dim impression of a beard, a blue woolen shirt, and a disproportionately large shoe buckle. The figure advanced to the bed, extended a broad, sun-burned hand, and a deep bass voice was heard to say:
“Good-bye, brother.”
Arnfinn, who was a hard sleeper, gave another rub, and, in a querulously sleepy tone, managed to mutter:
“Why,–is it as late as that–already?”
The words of parting were more remotely repeated, the hand closed about Arnfinn’s half- unfeeling fingers, the lock on the door gave a little sharp click, and all was still. But the sunshine drove the dust in a dumb, confused dance through the room.
Some four hours later, Arnfinn woke up with a vague feeling as if some great calamity had happened; he was not sure but that he had slept a fortnight or more. He dressed with a sleepy, reckless haste, being but dimly conscious of the logic of the various processes of ablution which he underwent. He hurried up to Strand’s room, but, as he had expected, found it empty.
During all the afternoon, the reading of “David Copperfield” was interrupted by frequent mutual condolences, and at times Inga’s hand would steal up to her eye to brush away a treacherous tear. But then she only read the faster, and David and Agnes were already safe in the haven of matrimony before either she or Arnfinn was aware that they had struggled successfully through the perilous reefs and quick- sands of courtship.
Augusta excused herself from supper, Inga’s forced devices at merriment were too transparent, Arnfinn’s table-talk was of a rambling,
incoherent sort, and he answered dreadfully malapropos, if a chance word was addressed to him, and even the good-natured pastor began, at last, to grumble; for the inmates of the Gran Parsonage seemed to have but one life and one soul in common, and any individual disturbance immediately disturbed the peace and happiness of the whole household. Now gloom had, in some
unaccountable fashion, obscured the common atmosphere. Inga shook her small wise head, and tried to extract some little consolation from the consciousness that she knew at least some things which Arnfinn did not know, and which it would be very unsafe to confide to him.
VI.
Four weeks after Strand’s departure, as the summer had already assumed that tinge of sadness which impresses one as a foreboding of
coming death, Augusta was walking along the beach, watching the flight of the sea-birds. Her latest “aberration,” as Arnfinn called it, was an extraordinary interest in the habits of the eider- ducks, auks, and sea-gulls, the noisy monotony of whose existence had, but a few months ago, appeared to her the symbol of all that was vulgar and coarse in human and animal life. Now she had even provided herself with a note-book, and (to use once more the language of her unbelieving cousin) affected a half-scientific interest in their clamorous pursuits. She had made many vain attempts to imitate their voices and to beguile them into closer intimacy, and had found it hard at times to suppress her indignation when they persisted in viewing her in the light of an intruder, and in returning her amiable approaches with shy suspicion, as if they doubted the sincerity of her intentions.
She was a little paler now, perhaps, than before, but her eyes had still the same lustrous depth, and the same sweet serenity was still diffused over her features, and softened, like a pervading tinge of warm color, the grand simplicity of her presence. She sat down on a large rock, picked up a curiously twisted shell, and seeing a plover wading in the surf, gave a soft, low whistle, which made the bird turn round and gaze at her with startled distrust. She repeated the call, but perhaps a little too eagerly, and the bird spread its wings with a frightened cry, and skimmed, half flying, half running, out over the glittering surface of the fjord. But from the rocks close by came a long melancholy whistle like that of a bird in distress, and the girl rose and hastened with eager steps toward the spot. She climbed up on a stone, fringed all around with green slimy sea- weeds, in order to gain a wider view of the beach. Then suddenly some huge figure started up between the rocks at her feet; she gave a little scream, her foot slipped, and in the next moment she lay–in Strand’s arms. He offered no apology, but silently carried her over the slippery stones, and deposited her tenderly upon the smooth white sand. There it occurred to her that his attention was quite needless, but at the moment she was too startled to make any remonstrance.
“But how in the world, Mr. Strand, did you come here?” she managed at last to stammer. “We all thought that you had gone away.”
“I hardly know myself,” said Strand, in a beseeching undertone, quite different from his usual confident bass. “I only know that–that I was very wretched, and that I had to come back.”
Then there was a pause, which to both seemed quite interminable, and, in order to fill it out in some way, Strand began to move his head and arms uneasily, and at length seated himself at Augusta’s side. The blood was beating with feverish vehemence in her temples, and for the first time in her life she felt something akin to pity for this large, strong man, whose strength and cheerful self-reliance had hitherto seemed to raise him above the need of a woman’s aid and sympathy. Now the very shabbiness of his appearance, and the look of appealing misery in his features, opened in her bosom the gate through which compassion could enter, and, with that generous self-forgetfulness which was the chief factor of her character, she leaned over toward him, and said:
“You must have been very sick, Mr. Strand. Why did you not come to us and allow us to take care of you, instead of roaming about here in this stony wilderness?”
“Yes; I have been sick,” cried Strand, with sudden vehemence, seizing her hand; “but it is a sickness of which I shall never, never be healed.”
And with that world-old eloquence which is yet ever new, he poured forth his passionate confession in her ear, and she listened, hungrily at first, then with serene, wide-eyed happiness. He told her how, driven by his inward restlessness, he had wandered about in the mountains,
until one evening at a saeter, he had heard a peasant lad singing a song, in which this stanza occurred:
“A woman’s frown, a woman’s smile, Nor hate nor fondness prove;
For maidens smile on him they hate, And fly from him they love.”
Then it had occurred to him for the first time in his life that a woman’s behavior need not be the logical indicator of her deepest feelings, and, enriched with this joyful discovery, inspired with new hope, he had returned, but had not dared at once to seek the Parsonage, until he could invent some plausible reason for his return; but his imagination was very poor, and he had found none, except that he loved the pastor’s beautiful daughter.
The evening wore on. The broad mountain- guarded valley, flooded now to the brim with a soft misty light, spread out about them, and filled them with a delicious sense of security. The fjord lifted its grave gaze toward the sky, and deepened responsively with a bright, ever- receding immensity. The young girl felt this blessed peace gently stealing over her; doubt and struggle were all past, and the sun shone ever serene and unobscured upon the widening expanses of the future. And in his breast, too, that mood reigned in which life looks boundless and radiant, human woes small or impossible, and one’s own self large and all-conquering. In that hour they remodeled this old and obstinate world of ours, never doubting that, if each united his faith and strength with the other’s, they could together lift its burden.
That night was the happiest and most memorable night in the history of the Gran Parsonage. The pastor walked up and down on the floor, rubbing his hands in quiet contentment. Inga, to whom an engagement was essentially a sol- emn affair, sat in a corner and gazed at her sister and Strand with tearful radiance. Arnfinn gave vent to his joy by bestowing embraces promiscuously upon whomsoever chanced to come in his way.
This story, however, has a brief but not unimportant sequel. It was not many weeks after this happy evening that Arnfinn and the maiden with the “amusingly unclassical nose” presented themselves in the pastor’s study and asked for his paternal and unofficial blessing. But the pastor, I am told, grew very wroth, and
demanded that his nephew should first take his second and third degrees, attaching, besides, some very odious stipulations regarding average in study and college standing, before there could be any talk about engagement or matrimony. So, at present, Arnfinn is still studying, and the fair-haired Inga is still waiting.
TRULS, THE NAMELESS.
HE was born in the houseman’s lodge;
she in the great mansion. He did not know who his father was; she was
the daughter of Grim of Skogli, and she was the only daughter he had. They were carried to baptism on the same day, and he was called Truls, because they had to call him something; she received the name of Borghild, because that had been the name of every eldest
born daughter in the family for thirty generations. They both cried when the pastor poured the water on their heads; his mother hushed him, blushed, and looked timidly around her; but the woman who carried Borghild lifted her high up in her arms so that everybody could see her, and the pastor smiled benignly, and the parishioners said that they had never seen so beautiful a child. That was the way in which they began life–he as a child of sin, she as the daughter of a mighty race.
They grew up together. She had round
cheeks and merry eyes, and her lips were redder than the red rose. He was of slender
growth, his face was thin and pale, and his eyes had a strange, benumbed gaze, as if they were puzzling themselves with some sad, life-long riddle which they never hoped to solve. On the strand where they played the billows came and went, and they murmured faintly with a sound of infinite remoteness. Borghild laughed aloud, clapped her hands and threw stones out into the water, while he sat pale and silent, and saw the great white-winged sea-birds sailing through the blue ocean of the sky.
“How would you like to live down there in the deep green water?” she asked him one day, as they sat watching the eider-ducks which swam and dived, and stood on their heads among the sea-weeds.
“I should like it very well,” he answered, “if you would follow me.”
“No, I won’t follow you,” she cried. “It is cold and wet down in the water. And I should spoil the ribbons on my new bodice. But
when I grow up and get big and can braid my hair, then I shall row with the young lads to the church yonder on the headland, and there the old pastor will marry me, and I shall wear the big silver crown which my mother wore when she was married.”
“And may I go with you?” asked he, timidly.
“Yes, you may steer my boat and be my helmsman, or–you may be my bridegroom, if you would like that better.”
“Yes, I think I should rather be your bridegroom,” and he gave her a long, strange look which almost frightened her.
The years slipped by, and before Borghild knew it, she had grown into womanhood. The down on Truls’s cheeks became rougher, and he, too, began to suspect that he was no longer a boy. When the sun was late and the breeze murmured in the great, dark-crowned pines, they often met by chance, at the well, on the strand, or on the saeter-green. And the oftener they met the more they found to talk about; to be sure, it was she who did the talking, and he looked at her with his large wondering eyes and listened. She told him of the lamb which had tumbled down over a steep precipice and still was unhurt, of the baby who pulled the pastor’s hair last Sunday during the baptismal ceremony, or of the lumberman, Lars, who drank the kero- sene his wife gave him for brandy, and never knew the difference. But, when the milkmaids passed by, she would suddenly forget what she had been saying, and then they sat gazing at each other in silence. Once she told him of the lads who danced with her at the party at Houg; and she thought she noticed a deeper color on his face, and that he clinched both his fists and –thrust them into his pockets. That set her thinking, and the more she thought, the more curious she grew. He played the violin well; suppose she should ask him to come and fiddle at the party her father was to give at the end of the harvest. She resolved to do it, and he, not knowing what moved her, gave his promise eagerly. It struck her, afterward, that she had done a wicked thing, but, like most girls, she had not the heart to wrestle with an uncomfortable thought; she shook it off and began to hum a snatch of an old song.
“O’er the billows the fleet-footed storm-wind rode, The billows blue are the merman’s abode, So strangely that harp was sounding.”
The memory of old times came back to her, the memory of the morning long years ago, when they sat together on the strand, and he said; “I think I would rather be your bride- groom, Borghild.” The memory was sweet
but it was bitter too; and the bitterness rose and filled her heart. She threw her head back proudly, and laughed a strange, hollow laugh. “A bastard’s bride, ha, ha! A fine tale were that for the parish gossips.” A yellow butterfly lighted on her arm, and with a fierce frown on her face she caught it between her fingers. Then she looked pityingly on the dead wings, as they lay in her hand, and murmured between her teeth: “Poor thing! Why did you come in my way, unbidden?”
The harvest was rich, and the harvest party was to keep pace with the harvest. The broad Skogli mansion was festively lighted (for it was already late in September); the tall, straight tallow candles, stuck in many-armed candlesticks, shone dimly through a sort of misty halo, and only suffused the dusk with a faint glimmering of light. And every time a guest entered, the flames of the candles flickered and
twisted themselves with the wind, struggling to keep erect. And Borghild’s courage, too, rose and fell with the flickering motion of a flame which wrestles with the wind. Whenever the latch clicked she lifted her eyes and looked for Truls, and one moment she wished that she might never see his face again, and in the next she sent an eager glance toward the door. Presently he came, threw his fiddle on a bench, and with a reckless air walked up to her and held out his hand. She hesitated to return his greeting, but when she saw the deep lines of suffering in his face, her heart went forward with a great tenderness toward him, a tenderness such as one feels for a child who is sick, and suffers without hope of healing. She laid her hand in his, and there it lay for a while listlessly; for neither dared trust the joy which the sight of the other enkindled. But when she tried to draw her hand away, he caught it quickly, and with a sudden fervor of voice he said:
“The sight of you, Borghild, stills the hunger which is raging in my soul. Beware that you do not play with a life, Borghild, even though it be a worthless one.”
There was something so hopelessly sad in his words, that they stung her to the quick. They laid bare a hidden deep in her heart, and she shrank back st the sight of her own vileness. How could she repair the injury she had done him? How could she heal the wound she had inflicted? A number of guests came up to greet her and among them Syvert Stein, a bold-look- ing young man, who, during that summer, had led her frequently in the dance. He had a square face, strong features, and a huge crop of towy hair. His race was far-famed for wit and daring.
“Tardy is your welcome, Borghild of Skogli,” quoth he. “But what a faint heart does not give a bold hand can grasp, and what I am not offered I take unbidden.”
So saying, he flung his arm about her waist, lifted her from the floor and put her down in the middle of the room. Truls stood and gazed at them with large, bewildered eyes. He tried hard to despise the braggart, but ended with envying him.
“Ha, fiddler, strike up a tune that shall ring through marrow and bone,” shouted Syvert Stein, who struck the floor with his heels and moved his body to the measure of a spring-dance.
Truls still followed them with his eyes; suddenly he leaped up, and a wild thought burned in his breast. But with an effort he checked himself, grasped his violin, and struck a wailing chord of lament. Then he laid his ear close to the instrument, as if he were listening to some living voice hidden there within, ran wa- rily with the bow over the strings, and warbled, and caroled, and sang with maddening glee, and still with a shivering undercurrent of woe. And the dusk which slept upon the black rafters was quickened and shook with the weird sound; every pulse in the wide hall beat more rapidly, and every eye kindled with a bolder fire. Pressently{sic} a Strong male voice sang out to the measure of the violin:
“Come, fairest maid, tread the dance with me; O heigh ho!”
And a clear, tremulous treble answered:
“So gladly tread I the dance with thee; O heigh ho!”
Truls knew the voices only too well; it was Syvert Stein and Borghild who were singing a stave.[8]
[8] A stave is an improvised responsive song. It is an ancient pastime in Norway, and is kept up until this day, especially among the peasantry. The students, also, at their social gatherings, throw improvised rhymes to each other across the table, and the rest of the company repeat the refrain.
Syvert–Like brier-roses thy red cheeks blush, Borghild–And thine are rough like the thorny bush; Both–An’ a heigho!
Syvert–So fresh and green is the sunny lea; O heigh ho!
Borghild–The fiddle twangeth so merrily; O heigh ho!
Syvert–So lightly goeth the lusty reel, Borghild–And round we whirl like a spinning-wheel; Both–An’ a heigho!
Syvert–Thine eyes are bright like the sunny fjord; O heigh ho!
Borghild–And thine do flash like a Viking’s sword; O heigh ho!
Syvert–So lightly trippeth thy foot along, Borghild–The air is teeming with joyful song; Both–An’ a heigh ho!
Syvert–Then fairest maid, while the woods are green, O heigh ho!
Borghild–And thrushes sing the fresh leaves between; O heigh ho!
Syvert–Come, let us dance in the gladsome day, Borghild–Dance hate, and sorrow, and care away; Both–An’ a heigh ho!
The stave was at an end. The hot and flushed dancers straggled over the floor by twos and threes, and the big beer-horns were passed from hand to hand. Truls sat in his corner hugging his violin tightly to his bosom, only to do something, for he was vaguely afraid of himself– afraid of the thoughts that might rise–afraid of the deed they might prompt. He ran his fingers over his forehead, but he hardly felt the touch of his own hand. It was as if something was dead within him–as if a string had
snapped in his breast, and left it benumbed and voiceless.
Presently he looked up and saw Borghild standing before him; she held her arms akimbo, her eyes shone with a strange light, and her features wore an air of recklessness mingled with pity.
“Ah, Borghild, is it you?” said he, in a hoarse voice. “What do you want with me? I
thought you had done with me now.”
“You are a very unwitty fellow,” answered she, with a forced laugh. “The branch that does not bend must break.”
She turned quickly on her heel and was lost in the crowd. He sat long pondering on her words, but their meaning remained hidden to him. The branch that does not bend must
break. Was he the branch, and must he bend or break? By-and-by he put his hands on his knees, rose with a slow, uncertain motion, and stalked heavily toward the door. The fresh night air would do him good. The thought breathes more briskly in God’s free nature, under the broad canopy of heaven. The white mist rose from the fields, and made the valley below appear like a white sea whose nearness you feel, even though you do not see it. And out of the mist the dark pines stretched their warning hands against the sky, and the moon was swimming, large and placid, between silvery islands of cloud. Truls began to beat his arms against his sides, and felt the warm blood spreading from his heart and thawing the numbness of his limbs. Not caring whither he went, he struck the path leading upward to the mountains. He took to humming an old air which happened to come into his head, only to try if there was life enough left in him to sing. It was the ballad of Young Kirsten and the Merman:
“The billows fall and the billows swell, In the night so lone,
In the billows blue doth the merman dwell, And strangely that harp was sounding.”
He walked on briskly for a while, and, looking back upon the pain he had endured but a
moment ago, he found it quite foolish and irrational. An absurd merriment took possession of him; but all the while he did not know where his foot stepped; his head swam, and his pulse beat feverishly. About midway between the forest and the mansion, where the field sloped more steeply, grew a clump of birch-trees, whose slender stems glimmered ghostly white in the moonlight. Something drove Truls to leave the beaten road, and, obeying the impulse, he steered toward the birches. A strange sound fell upon his ear, like the moan of one in distress. It did not startle him; indeed, he was in a mood when nothing could have caused him wonder. If the sky had suddenly tumbled
down upon him, with moon and all, he would have taken it as a matter of course. Peering for a moment through the mist, he discerned the outline of a human figure. With three great strides he reached the birch-tree; at his feet sat Borghild rocking herself to and fro and weeping piteously. Without a word he seated himself at her side and tried to catch a glimpse of her face; but she hid it from him and went on sobbing. Still there could be no doubt that it was Borghild–one hour ago so merry, reckless, and defiant, now cowering at his feet and weeping like a broken-hearted child.
“Borghild,” he said, at last, putting his arm gently about her waist, “you and I, I think, played together when we were children.”
“So we did, Truls,” answered she, struggling with her tears.
“And as we grew up, we spent many a pleasant hour with each other.”
“Many a pleasant hour.”
She raised her head, and he drew her more closely to him.
“But since then I have done you a great wrong,” began she, after a while.
“Nothing done that cannot yet be undone,” he took heart to answer.
It was long before her thoughts took shape, and, when at length they did, she dared not give them utterance. Nevertheless, she was all the time conscious of one strong desire, from which her conscience shrank as from a crime; and she wrestled ineffectually with her weakness until her weakness prevailed.
“I am glad you came,” she faltered. “I knew you would come. There was something I wished to say to you.”
“And what was it, Borghild?”
“I wanted to ask you to forgive me–“
“Forgive you–“
He sprang up as if something had stung him.
“And why not?” she pleaded, piteously.
“Ah, girl, you know not what you ask,” cried he, with a sternness which startled her. “If I had more than one life to waste–but you caress with one hand and stab with the other. Fare thee well, Borghild, for here our paths separate.”
He turned his back upon her and began to descend the slope.
“For God’s sake, stay, Truls,” implored she, and stretched her arms appealingly toward him; “tell me, oh, tell me all.”
With a leap he was again at her side, stooped down over her, and, in a hoarse, passionate whisper, spoke the secret of his life in her ear. She gazed for a moment steadily into his face, then, in a few hurried words, she pledged him her love, her faith, her all. And in the stillness of that summer night they planned together their flight to a greater and freer land, where no world-old prejudice frowned upon the union of two kindred souls. They would wait in patience and silence until spring; then come the fresh winds from the ocean, and, with them, the birds of passage which awake the longings in the Norsernen’s breasts, and the American vessels which give courage to many a sinking spirit, strength to the wearied arm, hope to the hopeless heart.
During that winter Truls and Borghild seldom saw each other. The parish was filled
with rumors, and after the Christmas holiday it was told for certain that the proud maiden of Skogli had been promised in marriage to Syvert Stein. It was the general belief that the families had made the match, and that Borghild, at least, had hardly had any voice in the matter. Another report was that she had flatly refused to listen to any proposal from that quarter, and that, when she found that resistance was vain, she had cried three days and three nights, and refused to take any food. When this rumor reached the pastor’s ear, he pronounced it an idle tale; “for,” said he, “Borghild has always been a proper and well-behaved maiden, and she knows that she must honor father and mother, that it may be well with her, and she live long upon the land.”
But Borghild sat alone in her gable window and looked longingly toward the ocean. The glaciers glittered, the rivers swelled, the buds of the forest burst, and great white sails began to glimmer on the far western horizon.
If Truls, the Nameless, as scoffers were wont to call him, had been a greater personage in the valley, it would, no doubt, have shocked the gossips to know that one fine morning he sold his cow, his gun and his dog, and wrapped sixty silver dollars in a leathern bag, which he sewed fast to the girdle he wore about his waist. That same night some one was heard playing wildly up in the birch copse above the Skogli mansion; now it sounded like a wail of distress, then like a fierce, defiant laugh, and now again the music seemed to hush itself into a heart-broken, sorrowful moan, and the people crossed themselves, and whispered: “Our Father;” but Borghild sat at her gable window and listened long to the weird strain. The midnight came, but she stirred not. With the hour of midnight the music ceased. From the windows of hall and kitchen the light streamed out into the damp air, and the darkness stood like a wall on either side; within, maids and lads were busy brewing, baking, and washing, for in a week there was to be a wedding on the farm.
The week went and the wedding came.
Truls had not closed his eyes all that night, and before daybreak he sauntered down along the beach and gazed out upon the calm fjord, where the white-winged sea-birds whirled in great airy surges around the bare crags. Far up above the noisy throng an ospray sailed on the blue expanse of the sky, and quick as thought swooped down upon a halibut which had ventured to take a peep at the rising sun. The huge fish struggled for a moment at the water’s edge, then, with a powerful stroke of its tail, which sent the spray hissing through the air, dived below the surface. The bird of prey gave a loud scream, flapped fiercely with its broad wings, and for several minutes a thickening cloud of applauding ducks and seagulls and showers of spray hid the combat from the observer’s eye. When the birds scattered, the ospray had vanished, and the waters again glittered calmly in the morning sun. Truls stood long, vacantly staring out upon the scene of the conflict, and many strange thoughts whirled through his head.
“Halloo, fiddler!” cried a couple of lads who had come to clear the wedding boats, “you are early on foot to-day. Here is a scoop. Come on and help us bail the boats.”
Truls took the scoop, and looked at it as if he had never seen such a thing before; he moved about heavily, hardly knowing what he did, but conscious all the while of his own great misery. His limbs seemed half frozen, and a dull pain gathered about his head and in his breast–in fact, everywhere and nowhere.
About ten o’clock the bridal procession descended the slope to the fjord. Syvert Stein, the bridegroom, trod the earth with a firm, springy step, and spoke many a cheery word to tho bride, who walked, silent and with downcast eyes, at his side. She wore the ancestral bridal crown on her head, and the little silver disks around its edge tinkled and shook as she walked. They hailed her with firing of guns and loud hurrahs as she stepped into the boat; still she did not raise her eyes, but remained silent. A small cannon, also an heir-loom in the family, was placed amidships, and Truls, with his violin, took his seat in the prow. A large solitary cloud, gold-rimmed but with thunder in its breast, sailed across the sky and threw its shadow over the bridal boat as it was pushed out from the shore, and the shadow fell upon the bride’s countenance too; and when she lifted it, the mother of the bridegroom, who sat opposite her, shrank back, for the countenance looked hard, as if carved in stone–in the eyes a mute, hopeless appeal; on the lips a frozen prayer. The shadow of thunder upon a life that was opening–it was an ill omen, and its gloom sank into the hearts of the wedding guests. They spoke in undertones and threw pitying glances at the bride. Then at length Syvert Stein lost his patience.
“In sooth,” cried he, springing up from his seat, “where is to-day the cheer that is wont to abide in the Norseman’s breast? Methinks I see but sullen airs and ill-boding glances. Ha, fiddler, now move your strings lustily! None of your funeral airs, my lad, but a merry tune that shall sing through marrow and bone, and make the heart leap in the bosom.”
Truls heard the words, and in a slow, mechanical way he took the violin out of its case and raised it to his chin. Syvert in the mean while put a huge silver beer-jug to his mouth, and, pledging his guests, emptied it even to the dregs. But the bride’s cheek was pale; and it was so still in the boat that every man could hear his own breathing.
“Ha, to-day is Syvert Stein’s wedding-day!” shouted the bridegroom, growing hot with wrath. “Let us try if the iron voice of the cannon can wake my guests from their slumber.”
He struck a match and put it to the touch- hole of the cannon; a long boom rolled away over the surface of the waters and startled the echoes of the distant glaciers. A faint hurrah sounded from the nearest craft, but there came no response from the bridal boat. Syvert pulled the powder-horn from his pocket, laughed a wild laugh, and poured the whole contents of the horn into the mouth of the cannon.
“Now may the devil care for his own,” roared he, and sprang up upon the row-bench. Then there came a low murmuring strain as of wavelets that ripple against a sandy shore. Borghild lifted her eyes, and they met those of the fiddler.
“Ah, I think I should rather be your
bridegroom,” whispered she, and a ray of life stole into her stony visage.
And she saw herself as a little rosy-cheeked girl sitting at his side on the beach fifteen years ago. But the music gathered strength from her glance, and onward it rushed through the noisy years of boyhood, shouting with wanton voice in the lonely glen, lowing with the cattle on the mountain pastures, and leaping like the trout at eventide in the brawling rapids; but through it all there ran a warm strain of boyish loyalty and strong devotion, and it thawed her frozen heart; for she knew that it was all for her and for her only. And it seemed such a beautiful thing, this long faithful life, which through sorrow and joy, through sunshine and gloom, for better for worse, had clung so fast to her. The wedding guests raised their heads, and a murmur of applause ran over the waters.
“Bravo!” cried the bridegroom. “Now at last the tongues are loosed.”
Truls’s gaze dwelt with tender sadness on the bride. Then came from the strings some airy quivering chords, faintly flushed like the petals of the rose, and fragrant like lilies of the valley; and they swelled with a strong, awakening life, and rose with a stormy fullness until they seemed on the point of bursting, when again they hushed themselves and sank into a low, disconsolate whisper. Once more the tones stretched out their arms imploringly, and again they wrestled despairingly with themselves, fled with a stern voice of warning, returned once more, wept, shuddered, and were silent.
“Beware that thou dost not play with a life!” sighed the bride, “even though it be a worthless one.”
The wedding guests clapped their hands and shouted wildly against the sky. The bride’s countenance burned with a strange feverish glow. The fiddler arose in the prow of the boat, his eyes flamed, he struck the strings madly, and the air trembled with melodious rapture. The voice of that music no living tongue can interpret. But the bride fathomed its meaning; her bosom labored vehemently, her lips quivered for an instant convulsively, and she burst into tears. A dark
suspicion shot through the bridegroom’s mind. He stared intently upon the weeping Borghild then turned his gaze to the fiddler, who, still regarding her, stood playing, with a half-frenzied look and motion.
“You cursed wretch!” shrieked Syvert, and made a leap over two benches to where Truls was standing. It came so unexpectedly that Truls had no time to prepare for defense; so he merely stretched out the hand in which he held the violin to ward off the blow which he saw was coming; but Syvert tore the instrument from his grasp and dashed it against the cannon, and, as it happened, just against the touch-hole. With a tremendous crash something black
darted through the air and a white smoke brooded over the bridal boat. The bridegroom stood pale and stunned. At his feet lay Borghild– lay for a moment still, as if lifeless, then rose on her elbows, and a dark red current broke from her breast. The smoke scattered. No one saw how it was done; but a moment later Truls, the Nameless, lay kneeling at Borghild’s side.
“It WAS a worthless life, beloved,” whispered he, tenderly. “Now it is at an end.”
And he lifted her up in his arms as one lifts a beloved child, pressed a kiss on her pale lips, and leaped into the water. Like lead they fell into the sea. A throng of white bubbles whirled up to the surface. A loud wail rose from the bridal fleet, and before the day was at an end it filled the valley; but the wail did not recall Truls, the Nameless, or Borghild his bride.
What life denied them, would to God that death may yield them!
ASATHOR’S VENGEANCE.
I.
IT was right up under the steel mountain wall where the farm of Kvaerk
lay. How any man of common sense
could have hit upon the idea of building a house there, where none but the goat and the hawk had easy access, had been, and I am afraid would ever be, a matter of wonder to the parish people. However, it was not Lage Kvaerk who had built the house, so he could hardly be made responsible for its situation. Moreover, to move from a place where one’s life has once struck deep root, even if it be in the chinks and crevices of stones and rocks, is about the same as to destroy it. An old tree grows but poorly in a new soil. So Lage Kvaerk thought, and so he said, too, whenever his wife Elsie spoke of her sunny home at the river.
Gloomy as Lage usually was, he had his brighter moments, and people noticed that these were most likely to occur when Aasa, his daughter, was near. Lage was probably also the only being whom Aasa’s presence could cheer; on other people it seemed to have the very opposite effect; for Aasa was–according to the testimony of those who knew her–the most peculiar creature that ever was born. But perhaps no one
did know her; if her father was right, no one really did–at least no one but himself.
Aasa was all to her father; she was his past and she was his future, his hope and his life; and withal it must be admitted that those who judged her without knowing her had at least in one respect as just an opinion of her as he; for there was no denying that she was strange, very strange. She spoke when she ought to be silent, and was silent when it was proper to speak; wept when she ought to laugh, and laughed when it was proper to weep; but her laughter as well as her tears, her speech like her silence, seemed to have their source from within her own soul, to be occasioned, as it were, by something which no one else could see or hear. It made little difference where she was; if the tears came, she yielded to them as if they were something she had long desired in vain. Few could weep like her, and “weep like Aasa Kvaerk,” was soon also added to the stock of parish proverbs. And then her laugh! Tears may be inopportune enough, when they come out of time, but laughter is far worse; and when poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter in church, and that while the minister was pronouncing the benediction, it was only with the greatest difficulty that her father could prevent the indignant congregation from seizing her and carrying her before the sheriff for violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor and homely, then of course nothing could have saved her; but she happened to be both rich and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much is pardoned. Aasa’s beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness so common in her sex, but something of the beauty of the falcon, when it swoops down upon the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely crags; something of the mystic depth of the dark tarn, when with bodeful trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August, her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the North, and the longer you
looked at them the deeper they grew, just like the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as deep as the heavens above, that is, whose depth only faith and fancy can fathom. But however long you looked at Aasa, you could never be quite sure that she looked at you; she seemed but to half notice whatever went on around her; the look of her eye was always more than half inward, and when it shone the brightest, it might well happen that she could not have told you how many years she had lived, or the name her father gave her in baptism.
Now Aasa was eighteen years old, and could knit, weave, and spin, and it was full time that wooers should come. “But that is the consequence of living in such an out-of-the-way
place,” said her mother; “who will risk his limbs to climb that neck-breaking rock? and the round-about way over the forest is rather too long for a wooer.” Besides handling the loom and the spinning-wheel, Aasa had also learned to churn and make cheese to perfection, and whenever Elsie grieved at her strange behavior she always in the end consoled herself with the reflection that after all Aasa would make the man who should get her an excellent housewife.
The farm of Kvaerk was indeed most singularly situated. About a hundred feet from the
house the rough wall of the mountain rose steep and threatening; and the most remarkable part of it was that the rock itself caved inward and formed a lofty arch overhead, which looked like a huge door leading into the mountain. Some short distance below, the slope of the fields ended in an abrupt precipice; far underneath lay the other farm-houses of the valley, scattered like small red or gray dots, and the river wound onward like a white silver stripe in the shelter of the dusky forest. There was a path down along the rock, which a goat or a brisk lad might be induced to climb, if the prize of the experiment were great enough to justify the hazard. The common road to Kvaerk made a large circuit around the forest, and reached the valley far up at its northern end.
It was difficult to get anything to grow at Kvaerk. In the spring all the valley lay bare and green, before the snow had begun to think of melting up there; and the night-frost would be sure to make a visit there, while the fields along the river lay silently drinking the summer dew. On such occasions the whole family at Kvaerk would have to stay up during all the night and walk back and forth on either side of the wheat-fields, carrying a long rope between them and dragging it slowly over the heads of the rye, to prevent the frost from settling; for as long as the ears could be kept in motion, they could not freeze. But what did thrive at Kvaerk in spite of both snow and night-frost was legends, and they throve perhaps the better for the very sterility of its material soil. Aasa of course had heard them all and knew them by heart; they had been her friends from childhood, and her only companions. All the servants, however, also knew them and many others
besides, and if they were asked how the mansion of Kvaerk happened to be built like an eagle’s nest on the brink of a precipice, they would tell you the following:
Saint Olaf, Norway’s holy king, in the time of his youth had sailed as a Viking over the wide ocean, and in foreign lands had learned the doctrine of Christ the White. When he came home to claim the throne of his hereditary kingdom, he brought with him tapers and black priests, and commanded the people to overthrow the altars of Odin and Thor and to believe alone in Christ the White. If any still dared to slaughter a horse to the old gods, he cut off their ears, burned their farms, and drove them houseless from the smoking ruins. Here in the valley old Thor, or, as they called him, Asathor, had always helped us to vengeance and victory, and gentle Frey for many years had given us fair and fertile summers. Therefore the peasants paid little heed to King Olaf’s god, and continued to bring their offerings to Odin and Asathor. This reached the king’s ear, and he summoned his bishop and five black priests, and set out to visit our valley. Having arrived here, he called the peasants together, stood up on the Ting-stone, told them of the great things that the White Christ had done, and bade them choose between him and the old gods. Some were scared, and received baptism from the king’s priests; others bit their lips and were silent; others again stood forth and told Saint Olaf that Odin and Asathor had always served them well, and that they were not going to give them up for Christ the White, whom they had never seen and of whom they knew nothing. The next night the red cock crew[9] over ten farms in the valley, and it happened to he theirs who had spoken against King Olaf’s god. Then the peasants flocked to the Ting-stone and received the baptism of Christ the White. Some few, who had mighty kinsmen in the North, fled and spread the evil tidings. Only one neither fled nor was baptized, and that one was Lage Ulfson Kvaerk, the ancestor of the present Lage. He slew his best steed before Asathor’s altar, and promised to give him whatever he should ask, even to his own life, if he would save him from the vengeance of the king. Asathor heard his prayer. As the sun set, a storm sprung up with thick darkness and gloom, the earth shook, Asathor drove his chariot over the heavens with deafening thunder and swung his hammer right and left, and the crackling lightning flew through the air like a hail-storm of fire. Then the peasants trembled, for they knew that Asathor was wroth. Only the king sat calm and fearless with his bishop and priests, quaffing the nut-brown mead. The tempest raged until morn. When the sun rose, Saint Olaf called his hundred swains, sprang into the saddle and rode down toward the river. Few men who saw the angry fire in his eye, and the frown on his royal brow, doubted whither he was bound. But having reached the ford, a wondrous sight met his eye. Where on the day before the highway had wound itself up the slope toward Lage Kvaerk’s mansion, lay now a wild ravine; the rock was shattered into a thousand pieces, and a deep gorge, as if made by a single stroke of a huge hammer, separated the king from his enemy. Then Saint Olaf made the sign of the cross, and mumbled the name of Christ the White; but his hundred swains made the sign of the hammer under their cloaks, and thought, Still is Asathor alive.
[9] “The red cock crew” is the expression used in the old Norwegian Fagas for incendiary fire.
That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a black ram, and thanked Asathor for his deliverance; and the Saga tells that while he was
sprinkling the blood on the altar, the thundering god himself appeared to him, and wilder he looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said he, were every-day fare; they could redeem no promise. Brynhild, his daughter, was the reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and besought him to ask for something else. He would gladly give him one of his sons; for he had three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor was immovable; but so long Lage continued to beg, that at last he consented to come back in a year, when Lage perchance would be better reconciled to the thought of Brynhild’s loss.
In the mean time King Olaf built a church to Christ the White on the headland at the river, where it stands until this day. Every evening, when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains, the parishioners thought they heard heavy, half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk; and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced chimes called them to high-mass, a suppressed moan would mingle with the sound of the bells, and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson was not the man to be afraid; yet the church- bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks; for he also heard the moan from the mountain.
The year went, and Asathor returned. If he had not told his name, however, Lage would not have recognized him. That a year could work so great a change in a god, he would hardly have believed, if his own eyes had not testified to it. Asathor’s cheeks were pale and bloodless, the lustre of his eye more than half
quenched, and his gray hair hung in disorder down over his forehead.
“Methinks thou lookest rather poorly to-day,” said Lage.
“It is only those cursed church-bells,” answered the god; “they leave me no rest day or night.”
“Aha,” thought Lage, “if the king’s bells are mightier than thou, then there is still hope of safety for my daughter.”
“Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?” asked Asathor.
“I know not where she is,” answered the father; and straightway he turned his eyes toward the golden cross that shone over the valley from Saint Olaf’s steeple, and he called aloud on the White Christ’s name. Then the god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground, writhed and foamed and vanished into the mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a hoarse voice crying from within, “I shall return, Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt least expect me!”
Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way through the forest; and when that was done, he called all his household together, and told them of the power of Christ the White. Not long after he took his sons and his daughter, and hastened with them southward, until he found King Olaf. And, so the Saga relates, they all fell down on their knees before him, prayed for his forgiveness, and received baptism from the king’s own bishop.
So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk.
II.
Aasa Kvaerk loved her father well, but especially in the winter. Then, while she sat turning her spinning-wheel in the light of the crackling logs, his silent presence always had a wonderfully soothing and calming effect upon her. She never laughed then, and seldom wept; when she felt his eyes resting on her, her thoughts, her senses, and her whole being seemed by degrees to be lured from their hiding- place and concentrate on him; and from him they ventured again, first timidly, then more boldly, to grasp the objects around him. At such times Aasa could talk and jest almost like other girls, and her mother, to whom “other girls” represented the ideal of womanly perfection, would send significant glances, full of hope and encouragement, over to Lage, and he would quietly nod in return, as if to say that he entirely agreed with her. Then Elsie had bright visions of wooers and thrifty housewives, and even Lage dreamed of seeing the ancient honor of the family re-established. All depended on Aasa. She was the last of the mighty race. But when summer came, the bright visions fled; and the spring winds, which to others bring life and joy, to Kvaerk brought nothing but sorrow. No sooner had the mountain brooks begun to swell, than Aasa began to laugh and to weep; and when the first birches budded up in the glens, she could no longer be kept at home. Prayers and threats were equally useless. From early dawn until evening she would roam about in forests and fields, and when late at night she stole into the room and slipped away into some corner, Lage drew a deep sigh and thought of the old tradition.
Aasa was nineteen years old before she had a single wooer. But when she was least expecting it, the wooer came to her.
It was late one summer night; the young maiden was sitting on the brink of the ravine, pondering on the old legend and peering down into the deep below. It was not the first time she had found her way hither, where but seldom a human foot had dared to tread. To her every alder and bramble-bush, that clothed the naked wall of the rock, were as familiar as were the knots and veins in the ceiling of the chamber where from her childhood she had slept; and as she sat there on the brink of the precipice, the late summer sun threw its red lustre upon her and upon the fogs that came drifting up from the deep. With her eyes she followed the drifting masses of fog, and wondered, as they rose higher and higher, when they would reach her; in her fancy she saw herself dancing over the wide expanse of heaven, clad in the sun-gilded evening fogs; and Saint Olaf, the great and holy king, came riding to meet her, mounted on a flaming steed made of the glory of a thousand sunsets; then Saint Olaf took her hand and lifted her up, and she sat with him on the flaming steed: but the fog lingered in the deep below, and as it rose it spread like a thin, half-invisible gauze over the forests and the fields, and at last vanished into the infinite space. But hark! a huge stone rolls down over the mountain-side, then another, and another; the noise grows, the birches down there in the gorge tremble and shake. Aasa leaned out over the brink of the ravine, and, as far as she could distinguish anything from her dizzying height, thought she saw something gray creeping slowly up the neck-breaking mountain path; she
watched it for a while, but as it seemed to advance no farther she again took refuge in her reveries. An hour might have passed, or perhaps more, when suddenly she heard a noise
only a few feet distant, and, again stooping out over the brink, saw the figure of a man strug- gling desperately to climb the last great ledge of the rock. With both his hands he clung to a little birch-tree which stretched its slender arms down over the black wall, but with every moment that passed seemed less likely to accomplish the feat. The girl for a while stood watching him with unfeigned curiosity, then, suddenly reminding herself that the situation to him must be a dangerous one, seized hold of a tree that grew near the brink, and leaned out over the rock to give him her assistance. He eagerly grasped her extended hand, and with a vigorous pull she flung him up on the grassy level, where he remained lying for a minute or two, apparently utterly unable to account for his sudden ascent, and gazing around him with a half-frightened, half-bewildered look. Aasa, to whom his appearance was no less strange than his demeanor, unluckily hit upon the idea that perhaps her rather violent treatment had momentarily stunned him, and when, as answer to her sympathizing question if he was hurt, the stranger abruptly rose to his feet and towered up before her to the formidable height of six feet four or five, she could no longer master her mirth, but burst out into a most vehement fit of laughter. He stood calm and silent, and looked at her with a timid but strangely bitter smile. He was so very different from any man she had ever seen before;
therefore she laughed, not necessarily because he amused her, but because his whole person was a surprise to her; and there he stood, tall and gaunt and timid, and said not a word, only gazed and gazed. His dress was not the national costume of the valley, neither was it like anything that Aasa had ever known. On his head he wore a cap that hung all on one side, and was decorated with a long, heavy silk tassel. A threadbare coat, which seemed to be made expressly not to fit him, hung loosely on his sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons, which were narrow where they ought to have been wide, and wide where it was their duty to be narrow, extended their service to a little more than the upper half of the limb, and, by a kind of compromise with the tops of the boots, managed to protect also the lower half. His features were delicate, and would have been called handsome had they belonged to a proportionately delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy vagueness which seemed to come and vanish, and to flit from one feature to another, suggesting the idea of remoteness, and a feeling of hopeless strangeness to the world and all its concerns.
“Do I inconvenience you, madam?” were the first words he uttered, as Aasa in her usual abrupt manner stayed her laughter, turned her back on him, and hastily started for the house.
“Inconvenience?” said she, surprised, and again slowly turned on her heel; “no, not that I know.”
“Then tell me if there are people living here in the neighborhood, or if the light deceived me, which I saw from the other side of the river.”
“Follow me,” answered Aasa, and she na
reached him her hand; “my father’s name is Lage Ulfson Kvaerk; he lives in the large house you see straight before you, there on the hill; and my mother lives there too.”
And hand in hand they walked together, where a path had been made between two
adjoining rye-fields; his serious smile seemed to grow milder and happier, the longer he lingered at her side, and her eye caught a ray of more human intelligence, as it rested on him.
“What do you do up here in the long winter?” asked he, after a pause.
“We sing,” answered she, as it were at ran- dom, because the word came into her mind; “and what do you do, where you come from?”
“I gather song.”
“Have you ever heard the forest sing?” asked she, curiously.
“That is why I came here.”
And again they walked on in silence.
It was near midnight when they entered the large hall at Kvaerk. Aasa went before, still leading the young man by the hand. In the twilight which filled the house, the space between the black, smoky rafters opened a vague vista into the region of the fabulous, and every object in the room loomed forth from the dusk with exaggerated form and dimensions. The room appeared at first to be but the haunt of the spirits of the past; no human voice, no human footstep, was heard; and the stranger
instinctively pressed the hand he held more tightly; for he was not sure but that he was standing on the boundary of dream-land, and some elfin maiden had reached him her hand to lure him into her mountain, where he should live with her forever. But the illusion was of brief duration; for Aasa’s thoughts had taken a widely different course; it was but seldom she had found herself under the necessity of making a decision; and now it evidently devolved upon her to find the stranger a place of rest for the night; so instead of an elf-maid’s kiss and a silver palace, he soon found himself huddled into a dark little alcove in the wall, where he was told to go to sleep, while Aasa wandered over to the empty cow-stables, and threw herself down in the hay by the side of two sleeping milkmaids.
III.
There was not a little astonishment manifested among the servant-maids at Kvaerk the
next morning, when the huge, gaunt figure of a man was seen to launch forth from Aasa’s alcove, and the strangest of all was, that Aasa herself appeared to be as much astonished as the rest. And there they stood, all gazing at the bewildered traveler, who indeed was no less startled than they, and as utterly unable to account for his own sudden apparition. After a long pause, he summoned all his courage, fixed his eyes intently on the group of the girls, and with a few rapid steps advanced toward Aasa, whom he seized by the hand and asked, “Are you not my maiden of yester-eve?”
She met his gaze firmly, and laid her hand on her forehead as if to clear her thoughts; as the memory of the night flashed through her mind, a bright smile lit up her features, and she answered, “You are the man who gathers song. Forgive me, I was not sure but it was all a dream; for I dream so much.”
Then one of the maids ran out to call Lage Ulfson, who had gone to the stables to harness the horses; and he came and greeted the unknown man, and thanked him for last meeting,
as is the wont of Norse peasants, although they had never seen each other until that morning. But when the stranger had eaten two meals in Lage’s house, Lage asked him his name and his father’s occupation; for old Norwegian
hospitality forbids the host to learn the guest’s name before he has slept and eaten under his roof. It was that same afternoon, when they sat together smoking their pipes under the huge old pine in the yard,–it was then Lage inquired about the young man’s name and family; and the young man said that his name was Trond Vigfusson, that he had graduated at the
University of Christiania, and that his father had been a lieutenant in the army; but both he and Trond’s mother had died, when Trond was only a few years old. Lage then told his guest Vigfusson something about his family, but of the legend of Asathor and Saint Olaf he spoke not a word. And while they were sitting there talking together, Aasa came and sat down at Vigfusson’s feet; her long golden hair flowed in a waving stream down over her back and
shoulders, there was a fresh, healthful glow on her cheeks, and her blue, fathomless eyes had a strangely joyous, almost triumphant expression. The father’s gaze dwelt fondly upon her, and the collegian was but conscious of one thought: that she was wondrously beautiful. And still so great was his natural timidity and awkwardness in the presence of women, that it was only with the greatest difficulty he could master his first impulse to find some excuse for leaving her. She, however, was aware of no such restraint.
“You said you came to gather song,” she said; “where do you find it? for I too should like to find some new melody for my old
thoughts; I have searched so long.”
“I find my songs on the lips of the people,” answered he, “and I write them down as the maidens or the old men sing them.”
She did not seem quite to comprehend that. “Do you hear maidens sing them?” asked she, astonished. “Do you mean the troll-virgins and the elf-maidens?”
“By troll-virgins and elf-maidens, or what the legends call so, I understand the hidden and still audible voices of nature, of the dark pine forests, the legend-haunted glades, and the silent tarns; and this was what I referred to when I answered your question if I had ever heard the forest sing.”
“Oh, oh!” cried she, delighted, and clapped her hands like a child; but in another moment she as suddenly grew serious again, and sat steadfastly gazing into his eye, as if she were trying to look into his very soul and there to find something kindred to her own lonely heart. A minute ago her presence had embarrassed him; now, strange to say, he met her eye, and smiled happily as he met it.
“Do you mean to say that you make your living by writing songs?” asked Lage.
“The trouble is,” answered Vigfusson, “that I make no living at all; but I have invested a large capital, which is to yield its interest in the future. There is a treasure of song hidden in every nook and corner of our mountains and forests, and in our nation’s heart. I am one of the miners who have come to dig it out before time and oblivion shall have buried every trace of it, and there shall not be even the will-o’-the- wisp of a legend to hover over the spot, and keep alive the sad fact of our loss and our blamable negligence.”
Here the young man paused; his eyes gleamed, his pale cheeks flushed, and there was a warmth and an enthusiasm in his words which alarmed Lage, while on Aasa it worked like the most potent charm of the ancient mystic runes; she hardly comprehended more than half of the speaker’s meaning, but his fire and eloquence were on this account none the less powerful.
“If that is your object,” remarked Lage, “I think you have hit upon the right place in coming here. You will be able to pick up many an odd bit of a story from the servants and others hereabouts, and you are welcome to stay here with us as long as you choose.”
Lage could not but attribute to Vigfusson the merit of having kept Aasa at home a whole day, and that in the month of midsummer. And
while he sat there listening to their conversation, while he contemplated the delight that
beamed from his daughter’s countenance and, as he thought, the really intelligent expression of her eyes, could he conceal from himself the pa- ternal hopes that swelled his heart? She was all that was left him, the life or the death of his mighty race. And here was one who was likely to understand her, and to whom she seemed willing to yield all the affection of her warm but wayward heart. Thus ran Lage Ulfson’s reflections; and at night he had a little consultation with Elsie, his wife, who, it is needless to add, was no less sanguine than he.
“And then Aasa will make an excellent housewife, you know,” observed Elsie. “I will speak to the girl about it to-morrow.”
“No, for Heaven’s sake, Elsie!” exclaimed Lage, “don’t you know your daughter better than that? Promise me, Elsie, that you will not say a single word; it would be a cruel thing, Elsie, to mention anything to her. She is not like other girls, you know.”
“Very well, Lage, I shall not say a single word. Alas, you are right, she is not like other girls.” And Elsie again sighed at her husband’s sad ignorance of a woman’s nature, and at the still sadder fact of her daughter’s inferiority to the accepted standard of womanhood.
IV.
Trond Vigfusson must have made a rich harvest of legends at Kvaerk, at least judging by the time he stayed there; for days and weeks passed, and he had yet said nothing of going. Not that anybody wished him to go; no, on the contrary, the longer he stayed the more
indispensable he seemed to all; and Lage Ulfson could hardly think without a shudder of the possibility of his ever having to leave them. For Aasa, his only child, was like another being in the presence of this stranger; all that weird, forest-like intensity, that wild, half supernatural tinge in her character which in a measure excluded her from the blissful feeling of fellowship with other men, and made her the strange, lonely creature she was,–all this seemed to vanish as dew in the morning sun when Vigfusson’s eyes rested upon her; and with every day that passed, her human and womanly nature gained a stronger hold upon her. She followed him like his shadow on all his wanderings, and when they sat down together by the wayside, she would sing, in a clear, soft voice, an ancient lay or ballad, and he would catch her words on his paper, and smile at the happy prospect of perpetuating what otherwise would have been lost. Aasa’s love, whether conscious or not, was to him an everlasting source of strength, was a revelation of himself to himself, and a clearing and widening power which brought ever more and more of the universe within the scope of his vision. So they lived on from day to day and from week to week, and, as old Lage
remarked, never had Kvaerk been the scene of so much happiness. Not a single time during Vigfusson’s stay had Aasa fled to the forest, not a meal had she missed, and at the hours for family devotion she had taken her seat at the big table with the rest and apparently listened with as much attention and interest. Indeed, all this time Aasa seemed purposely to avoid the dark haunts of the woods, and, whenever she could, chose the open highway; not even
Vigfusson’s entreaties could induce her to tread the tempting paths that led into the forest’s gloom.
“And why not, Aasa?” he would say; “summer is ten times summer there when the drowsy noonday spreads its trembling maze of shadows between those huge, venerable trunks. You can feel the summer creeping into your very heart and soul, there!”
“Oh, Vigfusson,” she would answer, shaking her head mournfully, “for a hundred paths that lead in, there is only one that leads out again, and sometimes even that one is nowhere to be found.”
He understood her not, but fearing to ask, he remained silent.
His words and his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which strove to take possession of her
heart and to wrest her away from him forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness was staked on him.
One evening Vigfusson and old Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye- fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa’s yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father’s countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then again paused, and said, imploringly, “Try to get her home if you can, friend Vigfusson.’
Vigfusson nodded, and Lage went; the song had ceased for a moment, now it began again:
“Ye twittering birdlings, in forest and glen I have heard you so gladly before;
But a bold knight hath come to woo me, I dare listen to you no more.
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.
“And the knight who hath come a-wooing to me, He calls me his love and his own;
Why then should I stray through the darksome woods, Or dream in the glades alone?
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.”
Her voice fell to a low unintelligible murmur; then it rose, and the last verses came, clear, soft, and low, drifting on the evening breeze:
“Yon beckoning world, that shimmering lay O’er the woods where the old pines grow, That gleamed through the moods of the summer day When the breezes were murmuring low
(And it is so dark, so dark in the forest);
“Oh let me no more in the sunshine hear Its quivering noonday call;
The bold knight’s love is the sun of my heart– Is my life, and my all in all.
But it is so dark, so dark in the forest.”
The young man felt the blood rushing to his face–his heart beat violently. There was a keen sense of guilt in the blush on his cheek, a loud accusation in the throbbing pulse and the swelling heart-beat. Had he not stood there behind the maiden’s back and cunningly peered
into her soul’s holy of holies? True, he loved Aasa; at least he thought he did, and the conviction was growing stronger with every day that passed. And now he had no doubt that he had gained her heart. It was not so much the words of the ballad which had betrayed the secret; he hardly knew what it was, but somehow the truth had flashed upon him, and he could no longer doubt.
Vigfusson sat down on the moss-grown rock and pondered. How long he sat there he did not know, but when he rose and looked around, Aasa was gone. Then remembering her father’s request to bring her home, he hastened up the hill-side toward the mansion, and searched for her in all directions. It was near midnight when he returned to Kvaerk, where Aasa sat in her high gable window, still humming the weird melody of the old ballad.
By what reasoning Vigfusson arrived at his final conclusion is difficult to tell. If he had acted according to his first and perhaps most generous impulse, the matter would soon have been decided; but he was all the time possessed of a vague fear of acting dishonorably, and it was probably this very fear which made him do what, to the minds of those whose friendship and hospitality he had accepted, had something of the appearance he wished so carefully to avoid. Aasa was rich; he had nothing; it was a reason for delay, but hardly a conclusive one. They did not know him; he must go out in the world and prove himself worthy of her. He would come back when he should have compelled the world to respect him; for as yet he had done nothing. In fact, his arguments were good and honorable enough, and there would have been no fault to find with him, had the object of his love been as capable of reasoning as he was himself. But Aasa, poor thing, could do nothing by halves; a nature like hers brooks no delay; to her love was life or it was death.
The next morning he appeared at breakfast with his knapsack on his back, and otherwise equipped for his journey. It was of no use that Elsie cried and begged him to stay, that Lage joined his prayers to hers, and that Aasa stood staring at him with a bewildered gaze. Vigfusson shook hands with them all, thanked them for their kindness to him, and promised to return; he held Aasa’s hand long in his, but when he released it, it dropped helplessly at her side.
V.
Far up in the glen, about a mile from Kvaerk, ran a little brook; that is, it was little in summer and winter, but in the spring, while the snow was melting up in the mountains, it overflowed the nearest land and turned the whole glen into a broad and shallow river. It was easy to cross, however; a light foot might jump from stone to stone, and be over in a minute. Not the hind herself could be lighter on her foot than Aasa was; and even in the spring-flood it was her wont to cross and recross the brook, and to sit dreaming on a large stone against which the water broke incessantly, rushing in white torrents over its edges.
Here she sat one fair summer day–the day after Vigfusson’s departure. It was noon, and the sun stood high over the forest. The water murmured and murmured, babbled and whispered, until at length there came a sudden unceasing tone into its murmur, then another, and
it sounded like a faint whispering song of small airy beings. And as she tried to listen, to fix the air in her mind, it all ceased again, and she heard but the monotonous murmuring of the brook. Everything seemed so empty and
worthless, as if that faint melody had been the world of the moment. But there it was again; it sung and sung, and the birch overhead took up the melody and rustled it with its leaves, and the grasshopper over in the grass caught it and whirred it with her wings. The water, the trees, the air, were full of it. What a strange melody!
Aasa well knew that every brook and river